Scotchman himself subsequently owned that “some of her Papers are the undeniable utterances of a true heroic mind; altogether unique, so far as I know, among the Writing Women of this generation; rare enough, too, God knows, among the Writing Men.” She accomplished comparatively little that can be shown or reckoned. Her mission was “to free, arouse, dilate.” Those who immediately responded were few; and as the circle of her influence has widened through their lives, the source of the original impulse has been unnamed and forgotten. But if we are disposed to rank a fragmentary greatness above a narrow perfection, to value loftiness of aim more than the complete attainment of an inferior object, we must set Margaret Fuller, despite all errors of judgment, all faults of style, very high among the “Writing Women” of America. It is time that, ceasing to discuss her personal traits, we dwelt only upon the permanent and essential, in her whose mind was fixed upon the permanent, the essential. Her place in our literature is her own; it has not been filled, nor does it seem likely to be. The particular kind of force which she exhibited—in so far as it was not individual—stands a chance in our own day of being drawn into the educational field, now that the “wider and more generous culture” which she claimed has been accorded to women. We may trace from the early publications of Lydia Maria Francis and Catherine Sedgwick the special line along which women have worked most successfully. It is in fiction that they have wrought with the greatest vigor and freedom; and in that important class of fiction which reflects faithfully the national life, broadly or in sectional phases. In 1821 Miss Francis, a girl of nineteen, wrote “Hobomok,” a rather crude novel of colonial Massachusetts, with an Indian hero. Those were the times of the pseudo-American school, the heyday of what Mr. Stedman has called the “supposititious Indian.” To the sanguine, “Hobomok” seemed to foreshadow a feminine Cooper; and its author put forth in the following year “The Rebels,” a novel of Boston before the Revolution. A more effective worker on this line, however, was Miss Sedgwick; whose “New England Tale”—a simple little story, originally intended as a tract—was published in 1822, and at once drew attention, in spite of a certain thinness, by its recognizable home flavor. The plain presentation of New England life in “Redwood,” her succeeding book, interests and convinces the reader of to-day. Some worthless elements of plot, now out of date, are introduced; but age cannot wither nor custom stale the fresh reality of the most memorable figure,—that manly soul Miss Deborah, a character as distinct as Scott himself could have made her. “Hope Leslie,” “Clarence,” and “The Linwoods” followed; then the briefer tales supplying “small moral hints,” such as the “Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor Man.” All are genuine, wholesome, deserving of the hearty welcome they received.